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December 8, 2003 Contact: Robin Gross, IP Justice Executive Director Final Witness for Prosecution of "DVD-Jon" Testifies Today (Oslo) Norwegian prosecutors will finish presenting their final witness Håkon Styri on Monday, December 7, 2003 in the landmark retrial of Jon Johansen, the Norwegian computer programmer who first published DeCSS on the Internet in 1999 when he was 15-years old. In January 2003 a unanimous Norwegian court rejected charges against Johansen for reverse-engineering DVD technology in order to build a DVD player for the Linux operating system. The charges had been brought by OKOKRIM, the Norwegian Economic Crime Unit, on a complaint filed by the Motion Picture Association in 2000. The US movie industry pressed Norwegian prosecutors to appeal Johansen's acquittal, and the retrial began on December 2, 2003 in an Oslo appeals court. Witnesses for Johansen's prosecution last week included Marsha King from Warner Entertainment and John Hoy from DVD-CCA, the entity that controls the licensing of DVD technology for the Hollywood studios. Both King and Hoy also testified for the Hollywood studios in the US litigation against 2600 Magazine , which banned the journalists from publishing DeCSS and links to the information under the controversial US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in 2000. Other expert witnesses for the prosecution were Stig Mjolnes, Terje Gaustad, and the investigator Svein Willassen. Johansen's only witness last week was Frank Andrew Stevenson, the accomplished Norwegian cryptographer who conducted the original crypto-analysis of the weaknesses of the DVD technology in 1999, and who also testified in the 2600 Magazine litigation in July 2000. Johansen was charged with violating Norwegian Criminal Code Section 145.2, a law that prevents people from breaking technical restrictions to obtain access to information they are not entitled to access. This is the first time this law is being used to convict someone for attempting to access his own property, such as a DVD. The January 2003 decision rejected the prosecutor's argument since Johansen was entitled to access his own lawfully purchased DVD and committed no copyright infringement. The Norwegian appeals court will break from the Johansen retrial on Tuesday, and closing arguments are scheduled to begin Wednesday and end Thursday of this week. More Information on Johansen DeCSS Prosecution:
IP Justice is an international civil liberties organization that promotes balanced intellectual property laws. IP Justice defends consumer rights to use digital media worldwide and is a non-profit organization based in San Francisco. IP Justice was founded in 2002 by Robin Gross, who serves as its Executive Director. To learn more about IP Justice, visit the website at http://www.ipjustice.org.
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